There are several products such as rice cakes and granola bars, that consist of dry, puffed rice, and/or dry, puffed cereals. Syrup binders hold together the dry, puffed rice and/or dry puffed cereals in granola bars. Other methods are used to hold together other dry, puffed cereal products. However, these dry, puffed cereal products all have a very low moisture content, and are neither frozen, stored frozen, or reheated before the consumer eats the product.
The procedures for making frozen shaped rice products are set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,711,295. The techniques for preparing a frozen cooked rice product that has a portion of its amylose and amylopectin modified are discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,087.
Cooked rice grains are soft and fragile, and can easily become pasty and gummy during the cooking and shaping process. Some high shear shaping machinery is designed to create a high shear action and will always produce shaped rice products with mashed and sheared rice grains that have an excessively pasty and gummy texture. Some low shear shaping machinery is designed with features that are not as destructive to the soft, cooked rice grains. When most low shear shaping machines are operated at very slow speeds, they make shaped rice products that have a satisfactory texture. However, when some low shear shaping machines are run at a faster rate, shearing, mashing, and rice grain destruction occurs, and the shaped rice products' texture become excessively pasty and gummy.
Currently, frozen shaped rice products, which are usually reheated by oven baking or fat frying, become very soggy and are judged unacceptable when reheated with a microwave oven. My invention incorporates procedures and equipment to make microwavable frozen shaped rice and/or other grain products that have a surface crust and interiors that are not excessively pasty and gummy even though they are produced at relatively high production rates.